Just six months since its the­atri­cal re­lease, Sev­enth Son al­ready feels like a relic. There’s a good rea­son for this: the film went in front of cam­eras in 2012 and sat on the shelf for over a year, which ex­plains why Game Of Thrones’ Kit Har­ing­ton has a baf­flingly mi­nor role while Ben Barnes has some­how as­cended to lead­ing man sta­tus again de­spite be­ing, well, a bit naff.

Master Gre­gory ( Jeff Bridges) is a mumbly mon­ster- hunt­ing Spook who en­lists the help of Cho­sen One Tom Ward ( Barnes) to track down big bad witch Mother Malkin ( Ju­lianne Moore) and her supernatural as­sas­sins. Why Tom? He’s the sev­enth son of a sev­enth son, which makes him spe­cial be­cause, er, rea­sons. It’s join- the- dots fan­tasy fluff with a cast of mag­i­cal archetypes, bland mon­sters and de­riv­a­tive sto­ry­telling, all set in a generic me­dieval land. It would have been per­fectly at home in 2006 sand­wiched be­tween Eragon and The Dark Is Ris­ing, but feels hope­lessly old- fash­ioned in a post- Thrones world.

It’s nicely shot, and Bridges and Moore are en­ter­tain­ingly hammy, but it’s a film that adds noth­ing to the genre, aim­ing only to dis­tract for a cou­ple of hours – and it barely man­ages that.